One of the biggest enemies of personal development is procrastination. In order for you to grow, you need to take action. You need to acquire new experiences and get in the habit of doing the right things in order to truly accelerate toward your potential. Procrastination is often bad because it prevents you from taking the actions you know are best for you, leaving you short of becoming the person you know you can be.

Procrastination occurs for a few reasons. First is laziness, not being able to summon the energy you need to get up and do something about it. Don’t be too hard on yourself though, laziness (aka “the law of least effort”) is actually an evolutionary adaptation, and it’s difficult to overcome it. Also, you might procrastinate because of doubt. You don’t think you’re capable of succeeding in the task or behavior you need to do, so you put it off as long as you can to avoid that overwhelm and discomfort. Embedded in this is the fear of failure, which can even keep you from trying in the first place.

So, how do you stop procrastinating? You design your life in a way that makes the action you want to take easier, so you rely on less energy and effort. You cultivate necessity through accountability and commitments to give you a boost of motivation and willpower. And you consistently do the small things so that you overwrite the habit once and for all.

How do you do that? The Stop Procrastinating Program.

Something that is finally becoming a more common conversation, thank goodness, is diversity and inclusion. Our world has a sad history as it relates to persecuted and oppressed people, and even though it might not seem like it I do think we’re slowly making progress. To best understand the dynamics at play, and how we can respectfully and responsibly exist within them, we need to generate a new awareness. This is something Jimi Vaughn articulates incredibly well.

When it comes to diversity and inclusion, we need to get in the habit of being critical about our environment. We need to be intentional about inviting people and groups who are underrepresented to participate so that all voices are heard. I’m challenging myself to be extra aware of this, and I encourage you to do the same!

Let’s talk about beliefs. Your beliefs are the deeply ingrained “truths” that you see in the world. What’s interesting though is that those “truths” are actually opinions that have been formed from your unique life history. So while you might believe something to be true, someone else can believe with the same conviction that the opposite is true. This is both an important and dangerous part of our lives, because it allows for there to be diversity in opinion, which is so crucial to innovation and collective well-being, but it’s also the root of many of the issues we experience in society.

Something to note is that these beliefs exist at the level of your subconscious. They are thought patterns that have been primed and reinforced with repetition throughout your entire life, and exist at a level that is not within your conscious awareness. Ultimately, your beliefs are tied to your identity.

Thinking is a very conscious, cognitive process, and through thinking we have the ability to make intentional, conscious choices. We don’t have the same luxury when it comes to our beliefs, which to me indicates that belief is where thinking ends.

So the takeaway to this, if you really want to grow, is to challenge your beliefs. Try to make them more conscious, observe the way you see the world, and ask questions about why you believe things to be a certain way. With curiosity you can invite a new perspective into your life that may liberate you from the layers of defense and the bottlenecks that are keeping you from reaching your potential.

Today I wanted to share an inspirational quote from one of my absolute favorite books, “The Promise of a Pencil” by Adam Braun. In this book, Adam details how he took a small observation he had while traveling and turned it into the international education non-profit Pencils of Promise. One of his final pieces of advice in the book is today’s quote “Make your life a story worth telling.” 

Basically, when you look back at the way you spend your time, do you feel like you did anything meaningful, significant, noteworthy, or interesting? Did you make progress serving notable causes? Did you create something extraordinary? And did you leave people and things better along the way? There is so much to do these days, and so much being asked of you, so using this lens helps you to filter out the junk and focus on the things that matter for you and others.  

If you think about it, what makes up a good story? It’s the challenges you overcame, the risks you took, and the experiences you cherish. It’s the way that you moved forward during high-stakes moments to make progress on something that is meaningful. I call it Do It For The Story, I gave a TedX Talk about it, but this quote carries a similar sentiment. In order to live you need to put yourself in moments where you feel alive, and win or lose, when you make it through you’ll have more of a story to tell. “Make your life a story worth telling.”

In order to understand what 'encouragement' is we first need to talk about its applications. When someone is indecisive about something, you want to encourage them to take next steps. If someone is afraid, you encourage them to step through it. When someone steps into their own, you encourage them to continue pursuing that. Encouragement is about giving hope or support to someone else so that they are more emotionally prepared to take action.

If you put it this way encourage literally has the words “in courage". It’s offering someone the strength and courage they need to proceed, which begs the question, "When is courage required?" The definition of courage is “strength in the face of pain or grief; The ability to do something that frightens one.” 

The fascinating thing about encouragement is that nothing changes outside of your mindset, your willingness to face off with the fear you’re feeling. It’s the exact same challenge, with the same road ahead of you, but a little bit of encouragement gives you the lift you need to have a new perspective toward what scares you and persevere through the emotions that are holding you back. 

To summarize, encouragement is literally to offer courage so that someone is more willing and mentally prepared to take action in the face of fear. And it helps you to embrace discomfort, which we all know is the greatest catalyst to our growth.

Let's talk about an African philosophy that I learned from my friend Tunde Daniel, a Nigerian who founded of the non-profit Chess In Slums. The philosophy is "Ubuntu", which is a Zulu word that loosely translates to “being self through others”. It encompasses a few fundamental values all in one thought - Respect, human dignity, compassion, solidarity and consensus.

Respect is about seeing the value in someone else’s unique path. Human dignity is applying that same respect to humanity at large. Compassion is about being empathetic to the soul behind the person you see. Solidarity is standing with others to protect something you find mutually valuable. And consensus is a general understanding that what’s best for the group is best for the individual.

Essentially, Ubuntu captures the shared nature of life. Our personal well-being is intricately woven within the well-being of others. African communities live this Ubuntu philosophy, sharing what they have and only taking what they need, in order to care for all. 

In Western cultures, there’s a lot we can learn from this. Capitalism and the individualism that is embedded in our society rejects this notion of interconnectedness. There’s only so much to go around and you need to make sure you get yours, right? Wrong! And if we choose to be the leaders that provide more visibility to an Ubuntu alternative, we can start shaping a more cooperative society.

Now, back to my friend Tunde. As a kid that grew up in a slum in Nigeria, he depended on Ubuntu for his own survival. And now he’s in a position to pay it forward, and has founded a non-profit called Chess In Slums where he’s helping to inspire kids in poverty to take an interest in education through chess. At For Purpose, we have plans to support him, and if you want to hear more about how, please provide your email at the bottom of our website www.forpurpose.com.

Something that is really important in your self growth journey is your ability to be aware of what’s around you. That’s why mindfulness and perspective practices are so effective, because it brings your attention to things that are existing beyond your immediate and comfortable reality. But if we want to get the most out of our awareness, we need to go one step further. It’s not just about looking at the things around you, it’s about seeing everything for what it is. 

Do you notice the difference? Your observation is only as strong as the impression it leaves on you, and if you really want to extract information from your surroundings you need to invest in it. You need to be curious about the way certain things provoke certain emotions. You need to question your processes and understand why you operate a certain way to see what the consequences of that are, good and bad. It requires more energy and focus to see, which is why we don’t do it as naturally. 

It’s a similar argument as to why people “go through the motions”. Have you ever noticed you’re doing something just to check the box and say you did it? That is looking. It’s not approaching the activity with a desire to dive deeper, and it limits your ability to extract more value. 

So I turn the question over to you - When it comes to your environment and the things around you, are you looking or seeing? In your daily habits and choices, are you looking or seeing? Life is so much richer when it has depth, and when you begin to see things in greater detail you’ll realize that there’s so much more to see.